ESRI Research Seminar and Events Programme
Spring 2010
All seminars take place on a Wednesday from 4.00 to 5.30 pm. Tea and coffee will be provided. Conversations will continue in The Didsbury afterwards – all welcome. Please inform Barbara Ashcroft (b.ashcroft@mmu.ac.uk) if you are planning to attend.
January 13th - Dave Heywood & Joan Parker
January 20th - Professor John Schostak & Lorna Roberts
January 27th - Danae Stanton Fraser - this seminar has now been rearranged for May 12th
February 3rd - Michael Fielding
February 10th - Professor Paul Connolly
February 17th - David James
February 24th - to be announced
March 3rd - Neil Mercer
March 10th - Martin Hughes
March 17th - ESRI Research Poster Session: Sharing research. making connections
Seminars:
Spring 2010
January 13th in Room 0.1, Behrens Building, Didsbury
Dave Heywood & Joan Parker
MMU
Research Led Teaching
The project reported here draws on a decade of researchworking with trainee and practising teachers in developing subject and pedagogic expertise in science. There are some ideas that are as difficult foryoung students to grasp as they are for teachers to explain. Forces, electricity, light and basic astronomy are all examples of conceptual domains that come into this category. Our work rejects the traditional separation ofsubject and pedagogical knowledge. We believe that to develop effectiveteaching for meaningful learning in science, we must identify how teachers themselves interpret difficult ideas and, in particular, what supports their own learning in coming to a professional understanding of how to teach such concepts to young children. A particular focus of the project has been concerned with how to implement research led (as different from research informed) practice. This has involved reviewing student and practising teachers' learning during taught sessions to determine their perceptions about the factors that contribute to supporting their understanding in science. It is predicated on the notion that in engaging with ideas at their own level, teachers are afforded the opportunity to develop insight into the synthesis of subject and pedagogical knowledge to support learning more effectively.
January 20th in Room 0.1, Behrens Building, Didsbury
Professor John Schostak & Lorna Roberts
MMU
'Democracy matters in race matters' : Obama, desire, hope and the
manufacture of disappointment
If the presidential victory of Barack Obama promises 'change' and settles any doubt that "America is a place where all things are possible", then what really has to change? What really is at stake in "the dream of our founders" and the "power of our democracy"? The media portrayed Obama as capturing the imagination of individuals globally, embodying aspirations for a politics of hope. His body is being written as emblematic of spacial and temporal shifts, hopes and fears. For many, the past, present and future converge so the struggles of the past have been overcome through his victory. As transgressive symbol 'Obama' mediates the passage from a 'violent history of slavery and racism' and opens the possibility of a newpolitics - a 'new man' (Fanon) or 'last man' (Fukuyama)? - where 'race', 'nation', 'civilisation(s)' 'Empire', the 'global' are 're-imagined' and 're-represented' forming a new 'cartography'. But after the euphoria - what next? 'Is it possible that democracy can be a way of being in the world, not just a mode of governance circumscribed by corporate power and moniedinterest'? (West, 1999: xx) This paper explores how desire for a transformative politics, and issues of race, are replayed, reimagined, re-represented through the symbolic imaginary 'Obama'. It draws on news media to explore political/rhetorical strategies already set into play that 'manufacture disappointment' in order to undermine and negate the transformative, transgressive symbolic significance of 'Obama' and thus manage the theme of 'change' to reassert the 'same'.
January 27th in Room 0.1, Behrens Building, Didsbury
This seminar has now been rearranged for May 12th
Danae Stanton Fraser
Bath University
Methodologies for longitudinal urban studies
In this talk I will describe a technique for the design and evaluation of pervasive systems. We recruited a cohort of 30 participants who engaged with an EPSRC interdisciplinary pervasive computing project Cityware over 3 years. This cohort represented a broad mix of ages and technological abilities so as to increase the ecological validity of evaluationof systems and applications developed within the project. I will discuss someof the techniques and methods that we have been able to employ as a result ofmaintaining this group of participants and illustrate how their data feeds into Cityware studies and applications. I will draw on some of the ethical implications of this work and our responses to them. While recruiting and maintaining a cohort has its costs, the benefits in terms of the depth, richness and validity of results produced are significant. I discuss this in relation to the data we have collected around privacy and trust, personality types and perceptions of the city.
February 3rd in Room 0.1, Behrens Building, Didsbury
Michael Fielding
London Institute of Education
Radical education for radical democracy - in praise of utopianrealism
Emerging from the New Left and feminist movements in the 1970s thenotion of ‘prefigurative practice’ argues for the legitimacy of radicalapproaches as a catalyst for deep social and political change. Looking briefly at the heritage of progressive education and its simultaneous dismissal andco-option by neo-liberalism, this draft chapter from a forthcoming book offersa contemporary account of prefigurative practice partly inspired by theBrazilian social theorist Roberto Unger and the Marxist economist E.O.Wright. It concludes by linkingprefigurative practice to a new framework for radical democracy within the stateeducation system in the UK.
February 10th in Room 0.1, Behrens Building, Didsbury
Professor Paul Connolly
Queen's University Belfast
The Struggle for Social Justice and the Place of Randomised Controlled Trials in Educational Research
In this seminar Paul will argue that many of the current debates surrounding randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in educational research have been based upon a misunderstanding of the nature and role of RCTs. In making this argument he will challenge the prevailing discourse that tends to position RCTs as part of a positivist and modernist project that is defined in opposition to radical, critical and emancipatory research. In contrast, Paul will argue that RCTs do have an important role to play in evaluating the effectiveness of particular educational programs or interventions delivered in specific contexts. In building upon this argument he will suggest that critical social researchers should, by definition, be concerned with educational outcomes and the question of whether educational programmes and interventions are effective in challenging inequalities and promoting social justice. Paul will conclude by setting out how RCTs can be used appropriately by critical social researchers to begin addressing these issues.
February 17th in Room 0.1, Behrens Building, Didsbury
David James
University of Western England
Schools, threshold thinking and work-related learning in a recession: Deficit, denial, and deification
This paper draws upon a just-completed 18-month evaluation study of a Work Related Learning (WRL) Project funded by the Learning and Skills Council (South-West) which sought to raise achievement of 14-19 year olds by instigating and supporting various forms of ‘high-quality work-related learning’. I will set out some examples of the celebrated outcomes of the Project and how they have engaged learners in new and exciting tasks. Yet whilst in many respects the Project was successful in its own terms, the evaluation also threw up some very troubling effects of WRL in schools dominated by league tables. I set out what I term ‘threshold thinking’, then address the 3Ds: Deficit refers to what both teachers and learners are perceived as lacking, and how the discourses of WRL continually position ‘education’ as not serving ‘the economy’ properly; Denial refers to a deep irony, in the removal of opportunities created by WRL from large groups of students because they were regarded as ‘safe bets’ to attain GCSE passes at C and above in Maths. Deification refers to the way in which WRL portrayed the world of work in an entirely positive light, as ‘the real world’, as unproblematic and benign for those with the right attitudes. The paper makes some practical suggestions for overcoming these troubling tendencies and also suggests what kinds of theoretical tools might help.
March 3rd in Room 0.1, Behrens Building, Didsbury
Neil Mercer
University of Cambridge
What do we really know about the value of dialogue for classroom education?
Research in recent decades has provided some interesting insights, and some hard evidence, into how spoken dialogue in the classroom can contribute to children’s learning and cognitive development. I will discuss the cumulative findings of this research and its implications for our understanding of educational processes, the relationship between language and thinking and ways to improve classroom education.
March 10th in Room 0.1, Behrens Building, Didsbury
Martin Hughes
Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol
Stories out of school: what children and young people tell us about their out-of-school learning
There is currently much interest in the learning which children and young people engage in when they are not in school. In particular, there is considerable debate over whether out-of-school learning is an area which should serve more closely the needs of the formal education system, or whether it provides alternative and more authentic models of learning which could be used to reshape - or even replace - formal education. This seminar will draw on the work of a recently completed ESRC professorial fellowship to look at some of the issues involved. In particular, it will look at the theories about learning which emerge from children and young people’s own accounts and dramatic performances of their learning in a range of out-of-school settings, including learning to play in a rock band, learning about teenage social life, and learning ‘life’s tough lessons’. It will be argued that these ‘stories out of school’ provide a coherent account of learning in which ideas such as performance, identity, self-belief and risk are paramount, and the relevance of this account for in-school learning will be discussed.
Martin Hughes is Professor Emeritus in Education at the University of Bristol. He has researched and written widely on children’s learning, both inside and outside school.
March 17th in The Old Chapel, Didsbury Research Centre 4.00pm-5.30pm
ESRI Research Poster Session
Sharing Research, Making Connections.
We would like to welcome all staff to the re-launch of the Old Chapel Main Hall in the Didsbury research centre, following renovation works. This event will be an opportunity for all staff and postgraduate students within the Institute of Education and beyond to find out about the ESRI research groups and current/recent research projects. ESRI researchers will be 'standing by their posters' to engage and explain. Come and chat to them about their work at an informal gathering, with wine and nibbles. Identify the research group(s) which could provide you with an opportunity to engage in debates of mutual interest, and if required, get support and guidance. Share your own research and make connections with people who have similar interests. Find out more about the ESRI bag lunches - lunchtime meetings to discuss fledgling research ideas, possible proposals for funding, tricky issues, or early findings.